Adele Roberts shares mum tragedy before Dancing on Ice - then 'felt her spirit'
Looking to the sky as professional skater Mark Hanretty held her above the ice, Adele Roberts felt she was being lifted by something more powerful.
Her beloved mum, Jackie, had died after a long illness on January 4, days before the DJ began competing in this year’s Dancing on Ice.
She considered quitting the show, but instead decided to tough it out – to do it for Jackie. So it is no surprise that, as she and Mark began their first performance last Sunday, Adele’s first thought was of her mum.
She says: “When I looked up to the sky at the start of the routine and during that lift, I just visualised my mum. I don’t know. It’s almost like I felt her spirit with me. It’s such a weird time in my life, but I think my mum was the sort of woman that never gave up. She was ill with her condition for a long time. It’s ataxia. That’s what she had. My sisters and my dad, my brothers, all my family have been like, ‘She just wouldn’t want you to give up.’”
“I felt like leaving the competition, but then I was like, ‘No, that’s not what your mum would want. She’d want you to try and carry on’. So, I thought, ‘Just try and do that routine for her. If you manage to make it through, then it’s the best icing and cherry on the cake’.”
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Ataxia is a condition which affects co-ordination, balance and speech. It usually results from damage to part of the brain. There is no cure, and patients’ symptoms generally get worse as time goes on.
Adele's mum Jackie (Instagram)
Adele competed in last year's London Marathon (Getty Images)Adele’s mum had been ill for some time, and it had affected her life and career for months even before Dancing On Ice began. “People don’t know this, but it’s the reason I left Radio 1,” Adele, 44, explains. “So I left Radio 1 last year because I knew my mum was not well, and she wasn’t getting any better. I just thought, ‘Now is the time to spend quality time with your mum and just enjoy every single day. Tell her every day that you love her’.”
“So, I saw my mum every single day for a whole year, and I could see towards the end and over Christmas she was getting worse and worse. She was really deteriorating fast. I just thought: ‘Just savour every moment’.”
“I tried to show her as much as I could about the show. I hoped with all my heart she’d be here for the first show. Unfortunately, that wasn’t meant to be, but I just thought: ‘If I get to do that routine and dedicate it to my mum, then I don’t care what happens after that’.”
“I’m just so relieved that we managed to do it.” Sunday’s dance, to Clearly by Grace VanderWaal, was enough to earn Adele and Mark joint-top spot on the leaderboard – and she would love nothing more than to win the competition for her mum.
She says: “I took my boots to her, and I got her to give them a kiss for me, so she kissed my boots. And then there was a little bit of my routine that we’d recorded in practice. Over Christmas, I took that to her and she saw the start of the video, but because she was so ill towards the end, it was hard for her to concentrate on the screen, so she only saw the start of it.”
Adele with dance partner Mark Hanretty (Kieron McCarron/ITV/REX/Shutterstock)
Adele has high praise for skating pro Mark (PA)“I just had that intention in my head on that Sunday: ‘Just finish the routine for your mum’. Now I just try and do it week by week. I take each day as it comes. I know there’s always twists and turns and surprises, but if I could win it for her, I mean, yeah, that would be amazing.”
Adele, from Southport, Merseyside, was able to draw some strength from her own health battle. She was diagnosed with stage 2 bowel cancer in October 2021, getting the all-clear after treatment in summer 2022. Her body is still recovering from the illness, and treatment including chemotherapy.
The keen athlete adds: “I thought the worst had happened when I had cancer, but then I think cancer in a weird way helped me deal with my mum because I appreciate the importance of time now. I don’t do makeup. I usually have running gear on and have trainers on. Having lipstick, wigs and dresses, that is so alien to me, but it’s part of being a woman, so I’ve got to start now. You’ve got to start sometime. It’s like, ‘Roll me in glitter, guys’.”
“I’m not sexy. Maybe a bit more of like femme fatale. Maybe I can be like an Uma Thurman Kill Bill person, maybe. I don’t know. I like catsuits for some reason and jumpsuits, so we’ll start there and see if I can get into the dresses. I’m not quite ready for the short slinky dresses.”
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Adele’s situation has parallels with former tennis star Annabel Croft, who lost her husband, yachtsman Mel Coleman, close to the start of BBC ’s Strictly Come Dancing.
She decided to continue and has since credited the show with helping her move her life forward. Adele adds: “Annabel was a huge inspiration to me. I remember watching Strictly and just being so moved by her and captivated by her. Just seeing the truth of her performance, you could tell there was something else going on in the way she expressed herself, so I’ve tried to do that on the show as well.”
With partner Kate Holderness (PA)
'My body is getting stronger' says Adele (adeleroberts/Instagram)“I love the bond that her and Jojo [Johannes Radebe] had. I feel like me and Mark have a similar bond as well. That’s one of the reasons I love Dancing On Ice because it’s on in January after Christmas when things are a bit glum. It’s just that little bit of escapism. Annabel’s strength in grief inspired me so I just hope that I can do that for someone else because she definitely did that for me.”
Adele, who has also appeared on Big Brother and I’m A Celebrity…, has always struggled with body confidence. But living through cancer has made her rethink. She has already said she would like to show off her stoma bag – which she calls Audrey – on the ice, to raise awareness and normalise them.
And while she is throwing herself into the training side of things, she has to try to go careful. Adele, who is in a relationship with actress Kate Holderness, 39, admits her body is still fragile after cancer treatment. She broke her wrist before Christmas, but it healed just in time for her to do the show. And she has popped her ribs out as she throws herself into training.
Brave Adele says: “Mark is always very mindful, so if he wants to try a lift, he’ll show it to me first and say, ‘Do you think that’ll be OK with Audrey?’ We just double-check that he can hold me in the right position. It has caused a problem in the sense when we first started doing lifts because he didn’t want to go near my stoma.
“He’d pick me up higher up, but then that popped my ribs out because the other problem is my body is still recovering, so it’s vulnerable. If I fall over, I fractured my wrist. I pop my ribs out, so we do have to be careful still, but we’re getting it into a good groove now where he can lift me. There’s a lift that we’ve got coming up which is super cool.
“He can do it without popping my ribs out, without hurting my stoma, but it’s a bit of a minefield. But my body is getting stronger.”
- Dancing On Ice continues on Sunday at 6.20pm on ITV and ITVX.
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